Seized Power

Famous quotes containing the words seized and/or power:

    For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
    And purged its faith, and trimm’d its fire,
    Show’d me the high, white star of Truth,
    There bade me gaze, and there aspire.
    Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:
    What dost thou in this living tomb?
    Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)

    Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a word to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and delight, the canary that sings on the skull.
    Annie Dillard (b. 1945)